San Francisco airport is presently the only airport in the state physically able to handle the biggest plane in the world, the A380, being built by Airbus carrying 555 passengers scheduled to enter service in 2006. These two tier gates will be able to accomodate the plane. Shot on 7/14/04 in San Francisco. LIZ HAFALIA / The Chronicle

The Airbus A380 will be the biggest commercial aircraft ever built when it takes to the skies in 2006, and if it were available now, San Francisco International Airport officials, eager to steal a move on competing airports, say they could handle the behemoth.

The double-decker, four-aisle jumbo jet, which is being built by worldwide contractors for final assembly at Airbus Industrie's plant in Toulouse, France, will dwarf the next-largest commercial jetliner, Boeing Co. 's 747-400, currently the workhorse of the skies for long-haul routes. The A380 has a wingspan that will exceed that of the 747-400 by more than 50 feet, stands 18 feet higher and can carry about 150 more passengers.

Airlines say the bigger airplanes will help them meet anticipated growth in air travel without having to schedule additional flights in congested airports. For airports, the big planes are potential moneymakers because airports impose landing charges and fees based on the weight of incoming aircraft. Additionally, international travelers, whom the new planes are designed to cater to, pump up airport revenue by spending more money in airport restaurants and gift shops compared with domestic fliers, who increasingly fly on budget airlines.

Airbus has listed the A380 for $220 million to $230 million apiece, but early customers are customarily given steep discounts on commercial aircraft. Initial press reports put the costs of A380 development at $135 million per plane.

It has been known for several years that SFO had the physical capability to handle the next-generation jumbos; the airport built its new, $900-million- plus International Terminal, which opened in 2000 with double-decker gateways, with just such planes in mind. Nevertheless, SFO joined Airbus and the main A380 launch customer, Singapore Airlines, in a news conference yesterday in the gleaming terminal to put an exclamation mark on the message.

"We knew Airbus had design plans on this aircraft, which was then called the A-XX," said airport director John Martin. "We went ahead in anticipation to become ready to handle an aircraft of this size."

Martin acknowledged that other major airports would also probably be ready to take the A380 when it flies in 2006, but only after spending additional millions to upgrade their facilities.

"We'd rather be ready ahead of time than be scrambling to catch up later, " he said.

The international terminal's gateways were built two levels high and were configured to be able to handle very large aircraft with long wingspans, Martin said, adding that SFO's 168 ticket windows and capacity to process 5, 000 travelers per hour through U.S. Customs Service and immigration checkpoints helped get it ready for the A380 challenge.

More recently, SFO spent $15 million widening taxiways and shoulders on its runways to handle the bigger planes. The airport will not need new runways for the A380, SFO spokesman Michael McCarron said.

Nor will the airport have to close one runway to handle simultaneous A380 landings or takeoffs. However, if there are "more than five or six of them out there at one time, the taxiways will be crowded. Eventually, that will have to be addressed."

Where and when the new aircraft will fly is up to the airlines that buy it. Singapore Airlines, which placed an order for the first 10 A-380s and has an option to buy 15 more, has not decided which airports will handle its A380s or where the first flights would be, said Singapore Airlines spokesman James Boyd.

However, Boyd said, "SFO is a good fit" for the aircraft and could be used on long-haul flights, such as between San Francisco and Seoul, and San Francisco and Hong Kong. Singapore Airlines' present daily service between SFO and Hong Kong is generally full and especially popular with business travelers, Boyd noted.

Rival Boeing has a next-generation series of its own.

By 2010, Boeing plans to launch its 7E7 Dreamliner, a 300- seat aircraft that it says will use 20 percent less fuel than its 747 and will not require costly adjustments by airports.

Japan's All Nippon Airways said this spring that it was buying 50 of the 7E7 planes for an undisclosed sum, and ANA spokesman Tom Fredo said the 7E7 Dreamliners suit the carrier's needs for international flights and Japanese domestic travel much better than the A380s.

"An aircraft of that size would be costly to most airports in Japan, which tend to be small," Fredo said. ANA, which has operated daily flights on the busy SFO-to-Tokyo route since the late 1990s, does not plan to acquire any A380s, he said, even though it has placed $12 billion in orders for new aircraft of various kinds over the next several years.

As SFO officials played up the cost to rival airports of upgrading to handle the new jumbos, Airbus officials played down the difficulties.

"I was with TWA when Boeing introduced the 747-400 and heard the cries of how tough it would be, how much it would cost to reorganize terminals, how long it would take to load and unload passengers, the stress it would put on luggage systems," said Airbus Vice President David C. Venz at SFO Wednesday.

"Today, you look around and see all these airports are crowded with 747s. You just adjust."

"Any airline that is flying 747s is a potential customer for the A380," Venz said. He said Airbus needs 250 orders to break even on the A380 and presently has 129 confirmed orders from 11 carriers.

Airbus, a European consortium founded in the 1960s to build the since- retired supersonic Concorde, passed Boeing last year to become the world's largest seller of commercial aircraft.

Sensitive to the politically charged nature of outsourcing and offshoring, the Airbus chairman for North America, Allan McArtor, said 50 percent of the A380's components are being made in the United States. McArtor hailed the new aircraft as quieter and more fuel efficient than wide-body jetliners of the past. Final assembly of the plane will be done in Toulouse, with the first test flights scheduled for next year.

Boeing, which has 61 confirmed orders for its 7E7 Dreamliner, is also building that plane internationally, with about half the manufacturing scheduled to take place in Japan, the company said earlier this year.